The Effect Of Dog Experience On Dog And Face Recognition:The Cognitive Mechanism

There are two theories on the study of cognitive mechanisms of face recognition.One is Face specificity theory,the other is Face experience theory.The specificity theory suggests that the face processing is unique and different from other visual object processing.There is a special module in brain responsible for face processing.But the experience theory suggests that the advantage effects in face processing are due to the expert perception experience with faces,not due to its uniqueness.These two theoretical hypotheses both have their own experimental evidence to support their points of view,and the current debate is still on for the theory.In recent years,in the field of object recognition research,the researchers begin to pay close attention to all kinds of experts for whether there is interaction in the perceptual experience.Whether the acquisition of face experience and word experience is independent or interact? If there is an interaction,whether the influence is a mutual promotion or impediment?Based on these considerations,this project studied by comparison with dog experts and non-dog experts to investigate the influence of dog experience to human faces and dog faces recognition.This paper intends to solve the following two major scientific problems.First,the dog experience will lead dog face processing have similar effect to the face processing(inversion effect and laterality effect).Second,the dog experience will lead to an impact on the face processing,but the effect is promoted or hindered?In Experiment 1,mainly inspect the impact of dog experience to the dog and the human face inversion effect.We use the 3 stimulus type(monkey face / dog face / human face)* 2 presentation(upright / inverted)* 2 subject(dog experts/ non-dog experts)mixed design.Using visual matching task can investigate the different accuracy and reaction time between the dog experts and the non-dog experts who identify the upright and inverted pictures of monkey,dog face and human faces.The results showed that: on the reaction time,type of stimulus,presentation and group have significant interactions.For the dog experts,there are obvious inversion effects on dogs and humans face processing,but no apparent on monkeys face recognition.For the non-dog experts,there is only obvious inversion effects on humans face processing,but no apparent on dogs and monkeys face recognition.More interesting,compared with the non-dog experts,the dog experts have greater the inverted effect quantity when they recognize faces.This shows that dogs experience not only led to the expert effect on dogs face processing,but also promoted the experts effect on human face processing.Experiment 2,the main inspection is the dog experience to dog faces,human faces and words processing effect of partial lateralization.We use the 3 stimulus type(dog face / human face / word)* 2 vision field(left / right)* 2 subject(dog experts/ non-dog experts)mixed design,Still using visual matching task.Investigate the different accuracy and reaction time between the dog experts and the non-dog experts who identify the dog faces,human faces and words.The results showed that: on the accuracy,type of stimulus,vision field and subject have significant interactions.For the dogs face processing,dog experts showed obvious lateralization effects,namely on the left vision field the accuracy is significantly higher than the right view.But the non-dog experts don't have the lateralization effects.For the human face processing,dog experts showed obvious lateralization effects,namely on the left vision field the accuracy is significantly higher than the right view.But the lateralization effects in the non-dog experts disappeared.For the words processing,there is not significant interactions in field and subjects.But the main effect of vision field,that is the accuracy on the right visual field significantly higher than the left field.Although dog experts' face partial lateralization effect disappeared,but this does not mean that dog experience could hinder the development of face recognition.Further analysis of the results shows that the dog experts losing dogs face lateralization effect is not due to the correct decline in the left field,but because the correct increases in the right field.That is say dog experience can promote the left hemisphere processing ability of human faces.Therefore,the result of experiment 2 also shows the dog experience not only led to the partial lateralization effect of face recognition,also raised the left hemisphere processing capacity of human faces.